This application requests funding support for the 2008 annual meeting of the Children's Tumor Foundation International NF Conference. The Meeting will be held June 6th-10th, 2008, at the Hyatt Regency Coconut Point Resort, Bonita Springs, Florida. This annual meeting has had a fruitful history since its inception in 1985, and it plays a lynchpin role as the premier annual gathering of researchers and clinicians in the NF community. The meeting is a forum for research information exchange and discussion for researchers from around the world, and has traditionally fostered collaboration, consensus building, and advances in translational research culminating in clinical trials. An innovation this year is the expansion of the NF conference with two additional days of clinical data. The demand to include a larger clinical element to the NF Conference is a marker of the progression NF research is making from bench to bedside. The advent of the US Army-funded Phase II NF Clinical Trials Consortium in 2005 has stimulated more interaction between NF clinicians and basic researchers over the past two years and this has been evidenced at the NF Conference. The unprecedented growth of CTF translational programs in 2007, including an NF Clinic Network and Clinical Trial Awards, stimulates further interactions between clinicians and scientists. This is a time of tremendous advances in NF research on many fronts, from basic through clinical, and this is reflected in the theme of the 2008 meeting - "Genes to Therapies to Complications". Twelve individual sessions will take the Consortium from clinical care data to molecular mechanisms of NF and translational models to clinical therapies. Speakers will include both junior and senior researchers. The goal of this meeting is to juxtapose current findings in clinical studies, biochemical, cellular and organismal systems. Each session will also include a keynote address by a leading investigator from outside of NF research to open up broad ranging discussions. Competitive travel awards will bring young investigators for oral presentations, and two poster sessions will allow investigators to present their work to the NF community. Finally, another addition in the 2008 NF conference is the two panel discussions, which will stimulate discussions among the attendees for controversial issues in NF medical community. We have taken two new approaches in order to increase the visibility of this meeting and of the state of NF research. First, to increase industry awareness of NF, we will seek fiscal sponsorship for this meeting from a large number of pharmaceutical companies. Incentive sponsorships will be offered at diamond, platinum, gold and silver levels. Secondly, the cochairs and the Foundation will work together to disseminate a full summary of the NF conference in the NF Newsletter as well in the NF Research E-NewsBlast to over 10,000 individuals. These actions will promote to the research community at large the status of NF research, the link with other cancers and neurological disorders and the key barriers to be addressed. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: The Children's Tumor Foundation International NF Conference has had a fruitful history since its inception in 1985, and it plays a lynchpin role as the premier annual gathering of researchers and clinicians in the NF community. The meeting is a forum for research information exchange and discussion for researchers from around the world, and has traditionally fostered collaboration, consensus building, and advances in translational research culminating in clinical trials. [unreadable] [unreadable] [unreadable] [unreadable]